Seen: Sanju 傘寿
Who: Nobuyoshi Araki 荒木経惟
Where: Art Space AM, Harajuku (map)
When: June 6 - August 15, 2020 (Open 1-7pm. Closed Mondays, Tuesdays)
Many of Tokyo’s art galleries reopened this week- and Art Space AM in Harajuku today opened with a new Nobuyoshi Araki show. Araki, who turned eighty on May 25th, titled this show “Sanju"「傘寿」("80 years old”). Sanju consists of recent work; large inkjet prints of his bizarre still lives and over 300 polaroids fill the room. This exhibition also incorporates work from an exhibition that was unable to be shown due to the coronavirus emergency.
This series, "Erokki, Ero-enpitsu", is a mixed-media set where Araki applied colored pencils (“iro-enpitsu in Japanese) to pages of his older photobooks from the late 1990s. (They’re relatively mild pictures but still out of IG bounds) These pages were then scanned and enlarged to prints about a meter tall.
Araki has been using paint to alter his photos for years, saying that color adds life to the "death” inherent in monochrome. By utilizing older images like this he’s kneading the present into the past. For Araki, the continuum of photography isn’t a line that stretches out- it’s a pulse that orbits a core of ceaseless creation and warmth. He’s always been right there in the middle of it all.